One thing that happened this month was that the chickens decided to revert to one of their most annoying behaviours: They have once again decided that it is better to scratch their pellets into the ground rather than eat them out of the feeder. This isn’t really a problem when the ground is dry as they will still eat them, but when the weather is this wet they get scratched into the mud and are wasted.

I have come up with a solution to this problem. I had a stone hearth off the fireplace which was here when we moved in, and I have put this underneath the chicken coop where the food is. Although this does get covered in mud, it is a lot drier as you don’t get water coming up out of the ground. As well as this, I have had to wait until they have eaten all of the pellets off of the floor before refilling their feeder, otherwise they will scratch out too many pellets and they will be wasted. This means that occasionally the birds have to go half a day without any food being available, but I don’t really see any other option.

A couple of weeks ago, I got up late on a Saturday, to find that Meg and Victoria were both in the garden. This is only the second time that Meg has managed to escape, and they seemed to be having a lot of fun in the garden so I let Daisy out too and they spent the day free ranging. There was a bit of sun on that day, and it was lovely to watch them sunbathing and dustbathing, instead of wading through the mud.

Today I got home at 5:15 as usual, and it was still really bright outside. I rushed out to the garden and the chickens were still up and about, so I cleaned them out after work. I think this means that spring is on its way! This means that I can change my routine and clean them out every day, and hopefully spend a bit more time in the garden.

Hopefully I should have a bit more to write about over the next few months…

Hopefully this will kill them!

Poultry shield is a liquid that I used to spray the inside of the coop and should hopefully get rid of red mite. Apparently it helps to destroy the mites and the eggs, and it was significantly cheaper than the spray I bought (probably cost me less than £1 to spray the whole coop compared to £15), and was also easier to apply.

The other product that I bought is diatom, which is diatomaceous earth and will hopefully prevent the mites from coming back. It works by dehydrating them, and although it won’t kill them instantly, it should help to control their numbers in the future. After I finished spraying the coop I spread a load of diatom all over the inside.

Both of these products were recommended to me on Down the Lane and those guys always seem to know what they are talking about!

Whilst I was cleaning out the coop again, I let the girls out in the garden. I must admit, whilst it has been stressful sorting all of this out, I have enjoyed letting them out in the garden again. They had great fun scratching around under my rose bush, and spreading a heap of grass clipping around the garden!

Chickens love piles of stuff, but they won't be piles once the chickens have finished with them!

I put the girls away and put the flower pots back on the bottom of the net to stop the girls from getting through, and went to fill up the water. When I got back out Victoria had managed to escape again through a tiny gap at the end of the net. I then had to chase her around the garden for 5 minutes to get her back in the run.

I always used to leave one flower pot on the net when I was out in the garden but it seems that the girls have learnt how to get out of that now. They really love trying to mess up my garden…

I was a little bit nervous about leaving the girls for the weekend, and to make things worse as soon as I let the girls out on Saturday morning, Victoria jumped up on the fence. That was the first time I had seen any of them go up onto the fence and I was worried that she would end up in next door’s garden.

In the end I had nothing to worry about and the girls were fine – although they did make a few attempts to escape the netted off area of the garden! Apparently whilst I was gone the girls had managed to find their way into the rest of the garden a few times. When I got back I let the girls out and within 20 minutes of doing so Daisy had escaped and was scratching about in a pile of grass clippings by my compost bin. She was only out there for about 2 minutes but she managed to spread the pile around half of the garden! I think I am going to have to put some netting around the fence and the top of the coop before I let the girls out again.

One more thing happened today that made me laugh. I went out into the garden and put some meal worms in the run for the girls, in an empty washing up bowl that I put in the run about a week ago. I went back inside to watch tv, and when I looked out I could only see 2 chickens – Meg was nowhere to be found. Then I noticed the washing up bowl was upside-down and moving around by itself! I realised that Meg had somehow managed to get trapped underneath it and was walking around with it completely covering her. It looked really funny and she didn’t seem to be at all bothered by it (I think she was still hoovering up some meal worms that were underneath).

I didn’t know what time the delivery was coming so I had to hang around all day, so I spent the morning in the garden doing a few jobs that I’d been meaning to do for a while. First of all I went out and broke up some wooden pallets that I’d scrounged from work a couple of days ago. It took me a while to figure out how to do it but I got there in the end. After that I did a bit of gardening, and was just about to go in for lunch when the delivery turned up with the run extension.

The girls had been begging me to let them out all morning, and as I needed to take the end panel of the run off to fit the extension I let the girls out. Out of all of the times I had let the girls out in the garden, I think today was the time that they looked like they were enjoying them selves the most! Straight away they went over to the flower bed and had a dust bath. This is the first time I have ever seen them do this and they looked like they were having a great time. There are now 3 chicken shaped holes in that flower bed.

Daisy enjoying a dust bath

(I still haven't thought of a name for this chicken)

It took me less than an hour to put up the extension – the main difficulty came from the fact that my garden is not very level. I had to use various bits of wood and bricks to rest one end of the run on whilst I put it together but it wasn’t too much trouble. I have to admit that I am very pleased with the way that the run has turned out. I bought it from here: wood-crafts. I would definitely recommend them if you are thinking of buying a chicken coop/run – the overall price that I have paid was very good and their customer service is excellent.

My extended run

After I had finished building the run I tempted the girls in with some treats and went off on my first geocaching expedition which I thoroughly enjoyed! When I got back from that I finished making the pallets into a compost bin. All in all I think I had a pretty productive and enjoyable day!

Daisy is all hunched up

I posted about Daisy’s health on the forum and JuicyLucy said that it is normal to have bloody poos when you are worming them – she said the blood would be pink and stringy which is exactly how it looked. I was still worried about her so I popped home at lunch time and she seemed to be fine by then. I’m glad I went home because it meant I could relax this afternoon instead of being worried the whole time.

Flubenvet

When I got in from work I had the usual task of weighing out some more medicine for the birds. I must admit I will be glad when the treatment is finished – only a few more days to go now.

I let the girls out just after 6:00 and they all decided to attack the forget-me-nots that my parents brought up for me last week. I moved the pot up on top of the bench but they still finished off the bits that were hanging down low enough to be pecked. I think there are still enough of them left to just about survive!

Forget-Me-Nots

After dinner, the birds kept trying to jump in through the closed patio doors so I thought I’d go out and play with them for a bit. I gave them a few treats and two of them even sat on my lap at one point!

The red one is definitely getting a lot more tame. Daisy has always been the most tame and she will let me touch her, but recently I have been able to touch the red one without her minding too much. Today I was running around in the garden and the girls were following me and the red one was always the first to catch up with me. I would run across the garden and put some treats on the floor – both of the others would go straight for the treats but the red on would stand right close to me and look up at me. When I ran back to the other side of the garden the other girls would carry on eating the treats but she would run after me straight away.

When the girls started to go in for the night I suddenly realised I hadn’t cleaned the poos out of the house yet, so I quickly took the roof off and tried to clean it out before the girls went in. Before I could finish though they all ended up on top of the coop and getting in my way. One thing I’ve learnt about chickens is that they love to get in your way!

A little while later I went back outside to see what the girls were doing and I could only see the other two. I checked all of the usual places such as the side passage and the bushes down the back of the garden but she was nowhere to be seen. The only place I hadn’t checked was inside the coop so I lifted up the lid and there she was inside.

Is Daisy just tired or is she sick?

I am a bit worried about it because I have never seen the girls disappear inside the coop before bed time. One thing I did notice is that when she was laying down she seemed to have her butt in the air a bit so maybe she is trying to lay an egg. Also whenever I grab her she squats down on the floor but she has done that since I first got her. This could be another sign that she is coming into lay.

One other thing that I noticed today when Daisy was sitting down outside is that chickens close their eyes differently to people. Where people close their top eye-lids down over their eyes, it seems that chickens raise their bottom eyelids up! I’m still learning things about chickens every day…

After a little while I heard a tapping on the French doors – the girls had come over to the window and were trying to eat a little speck of dirt on the window. They carried on pecking the window for ages so I grabbed the camera and managed to film this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ot6J7Ms0Ms .

The chickens were pecking at the window trying to eat a tiny speck of dirt

Apparently I am supposed to give the girls approximately 0.12 grams of Flubenvet each day of the treatment, so I used my digital scales to measure out 0.35 grams and mixed it with a little cooking oil. I then added a large handful of mixed corn and stirred it in the mixture. The oil meant that the medicine coated he corn and didn’t simply fall to the bottom of the container (Flubenvet is a fine powder). I put it in the run and the girls ate the lot.

It was raining all day today and the floor of the run was turning into a bit of a swamp, so I thought it was probably a good time to let the girls out and give it a bit of a clean. I came inside to cook dinner and pretty much left them to it. At one point I looked out the window and the grey one had managed to find another scrap of silicon sealant in the garden somewhere so I ran outside and chased her around the garden. Unfortunately she managed to eat it! I had a look where she had been scratching around and found some more sticking out of the ground. I can’t see any more but I do worry about the kind of rubbish that they eat when they are out in the garden.

Whilst I was in the house the girls kept coming up to the French doors and peering in with their beaks right up to the window. Then, after I had eaten my dinner I was sitting watching tv when the grey one came up to the door and tried to jump in! She looked pretty startled when she hit the window!

Daisy Exploring the Patio

Before today, whenever I have let them out of the pen they have spent most of the time in the flower beds and on the lawn and pretty much stayed away from the patio.  Today they decided to spend most of the time exploring the patio and the alley way down the side of the house which I found pretty stressful!  When I let them out today I intended to sit in the house for half an hour and let them get on with it, but I changed my mind when I saw them trying to eat a scrap of silicon sealant that must have ended up out there when I got my patio doors replaced.  I immediately went outside and got it off of them when I noticed they had found some more.  I then spent the next 45 minutes chasing the chickens round the garden in a mad race to pick up all of the rubbish before they did!  Before today I though my garden was pretty clean but the chickens are really good at finding rubbish.  Most of it was left over from builders but a few bits had obviously blown over the fence.

When I finally got them to stop trying to eat bits of silicon and plastic they decided it was time to rampage through the patio knocking over flower pots!  I ended putting all of the seedlings up on the bench so that the girls couldn’t get to them.

Towards the end of the free-ranging session a helicopter started hovering over the school field out the back – I think it might be related to all of the noise I have been hearing from there.  Maybe someone actually broke in or something this time.  Either way the helicopter seemed to really confuse the girls – while it was out they spent a lot of time standing still and looking around, trying to figure out where the strange noise was coming from.  Once the helicopter disappeared it was starting to get dark and I was slightly relieved to see the girls go back into their run.

Rumaging Around in the Forget-Me-Nots

At lunch time today I came home from work because I was having some stuff delivered for the girls – I got a big bag of mixed corn and some dried meal-worms.  These went down a treat – the birds seem to like the meal-worms more than they like the mixed bird seed that I have been giving them.  The mixed corn was also highly successful as it seems to contain all of the bits that they like most out of the bird seed (and with no black sunflower seeds that they always leave behind).

One more thing before I go: I was reading the chicken forum at Down the Lane and someone made a post saying that one of their chickens has been producing sloppy, caramel-coloured poos. At least one of mine (the grey one) has also been doing this. On the forum they seem to think it could mean that the girl has got worms so I ordered some Flubenvet which is due to arrive tomorrow. I am going to worm them all as the sloppy horrible poo is difficult to clean up and smells disgusting!

I Think my Girls Might have Worms!